Job Candidates

Expected Completion Date of PhD:
May 2020

CV (PDF)

Major Fields:
Theories of Growth, Macroeconomics, and Classical Political Economy

Dissertation Title: Three Essays on Income Distribution, Growth and Household Debt Dynamics

Profile: 
My main research interest is in post-Keynesian growth theories and the relationship between income distribution and household debt dynamics. My PhD dissertation consists of three essays on demand-led growth models and their attempt to incorporate household debt-financed consumption.

In the first paper, I use multiple filtering methods to estimate a long-term relationship between economic growth and wage share for the U.S. economy. I estimate a positive long run relationship between the two variables.

In the second paper I develop a model for household debt-financed consumption in which household savings decisions are determined by a targeted wealth-to-wage ratio. I argue that households take into account expectations of their future wages in order to define a targeted ratio. I also find that the target tends to increases with income and age.

Finally, in the third paper, I incorporate the household consumption model of the second paper into a demand-led growth model. The household debt-financed consumption function estimated in the second chapter is incorporated into a post-Keynesian model where household consumption decisions are the main driver of economic growth for the U.S. economy.  

Contact Email: davij032@newschool.edu

Expected Completion Date of PhD:
May 16, 2020

CV (PDF)

Major Field:
Development Economics 

Dissertation Title:
Agrarian Question in India: Past, Present, Future 

Profile: 
My work looks at agrarian transitions in the postcolonial development context. Through a comparative historical analysis, I assess the different experiences of India and China in their efforts to resolve the Agrarian Question, through the Green Revolution in the former and collectivization and scientific farming in the latter.

This provides the theoretical backdrop for my field research, conducted in post-Green Revolution Haryana, India, in a bid to understand diversification and migration among agricultural households. I also engage with questions of methodology and philosophy of science and have intervened in the literature on the application of the works of Thomas Kuhn in the discipline of economics.  

Contact Email:
yadas719@newschool.edu

Expected Completion Date of PhD:
May 2020

CV (PDF) 

Major Fields:
Macroeconomics, Political Economy 

Dissertation Title:
Rethinking growth and distribution in the US: Financial, healthcare and professional-business services as intermediate consumption of the economy 

Profile:
My research focuses on sectoral dynamics of U.S. growth and distribution since 1947, in particular after 1980. In my dissertation, I explore the impacts of the treatment of rapidly growing finance, healthcare, and professional-business services as intermediate consumption of the economy. I argue that these services do not produce final uses for households, and thus they become the costs of the net product. The contribution of my research is a new measurement of real output and its application to current questions about the U.S. political economy.   

In my first chapter, I adjust the expenditures side of national accounts by using input-output data of the Bureau of Economic Analysis and arrive at a slower growth after 1980. The second chapter expands the adjustments to income side by employing consumer expenditure survey data of the Bureau of Labor Statistics; it finds sharper wage-profit inequality since 1985. The third chapter focuses on value-added side adjustments and discusses industry growth rates and distributions of income. 

My research investigates the mismeasurement of the GDP of our economies from a new angle which, as a by-product, takes an important portion of rent-seeking activities that are concentrated in banking, health industry, and legal services out of national income. As a policy recommendation, restricting finance to funding productive investment, lowering healthcare costs, and reducing the costs of the legal system will reduce the cost of producing the value added, thus creating new opportunities for growth. National accounts will become more in line with the social goals of a higher standard of living and welfare.  

Contact Email:
tercr677@newschool.edu

Expected Completion of PhD Date: 
May 2020

CV (PDF)

Major Fields: 
Microeconomics, Political Economy, Gender Economics, and Development Economics

Dissertation Title:
Identity Conflict and Functional Income Distribution: Essays on Gender, Class Solidarity and the Wage-Profit Frontier.

Profile:
Throughout my Ph.D., the main areas of my studies at the economics department at the New School have been microeconomic theory, Input-Output methods, gender economics, political economy, and macroeconomic modeling. My dissertation is composed of three essays. The first essay departs from a Marxist framework and from the labor theory of value. The focus is on how identity conflict can lead to a shift in the long run equilibrium share of wages. The conclusion is that identity conflicts in the short run can lead to a decrease in the share of wages on the overall income in the long run. The second essay focuses on gender and racial aspects of the U.S. labor movement to show how competition amongst workers creates a social coordination problem. This essay presents a game theory statistical equilibrium model that investigates how the interaction of workers in conflict can lead to a weaker labor movement, lower unionization rates, and therefore less bargaining power to the workers. The Current Population Survey data corroborates the theoretical model conclusions.

The third essay, co-authored with Professor Anwar Shaikh is currently under review for the Economics System Research. The paper discusses mathematical properties of the U.S. Input-Output tables and their consequences to the wage-profit curve linearity and to the Cambridge controversy. In another ongoing project of mine, in collaboration with Assistant Professor Katherine Moos, I combine my expertise in input-output techniques to develop a data set that will allow us to calculate chained effects in the economy of reproduction labor.
In future research I would like to combine my knowledge of development economics and gender economics. I would like to investigate the consequences of gender and racial discrimination to the living conditions of the population of developing countries.

Contact Email: pirel110@newschool.edu

Expected Completion of PhD Date:
May 2020

CV(PDF) 

Major Fields:
Microeconomics, computational methods, ecological economics 

Dissertation Title:
“Economic Production as Life: A Classical Approach to Computational Social Science” 

Profile: 
My research employs computational methods to further our understanding of the complex and evolutionary dynamics of economic competition as the central regulating force of the social division of labor in the capitalist system. My research interests include microeconomics, political economy, complexity theory, industrial organization, ecological economics, and regional inequality.

In the first chapter of my dissertation, “Economic Production as Life,” I address the classic problem of the dynamic convergence of a competitive economy to equilibrium under alternative microfoundations where reproduction, not optimization, is the fundamental closure of the model. Equilibrium in prices and quantities is not presumed, but dynamically attained, under evolving technology and demand, by the systematic, disorderly operation of economic competition over microeconomic variables in the form of macro-level statistical regularities in the aggregate. The model reproduces a variety of stylized facts of economic competition: price equalization around its competitive value, selection of the lowest-cost technology, equalization of inter-industrial profit rates and supply and demand, downward-sloping demand curves, and a tent-shaped distribution for profitability that is consistent with the empirical evidence. 

In the second chapter, “How Much Time Do We Have Left for the Green Transition?”, I explore the dynamics of the structural transition of national economies from carbon to renewable energy. Using WIOD empirical input-output data, I implement simulations of the Flaschel-Semmler model of multisectorial growth with technology innovation and extinction and assess how directed revenue-neutral fiscal policy and technical efficiency can accelerate the speed of de-carbonization.  

In the third chapter, “Exploring Bagnasco’s Hypothesis of the Third Italy Today,” I employ an econometric machine-learning technique to track and identify spatial clusters of socioeconomic data. I evaluate persistent regional inequality in Italy in the recent context of the European Common Market and assess to what extent it explains the current rise of far-right populism in the country.

Contact Email: vallo119@newschool.edu